Railroads routinely level and replace rails as part of their ongoing track maintenance and repair.
In doing this, a rail is first removed. Then, portions of the ties on which the removed rail had rested are milled to desired heights so as to have the milled surfaces lying substantially in a common plane. After this, a rail is remounted on the milled surfaces of the ties.
Heretofore, wooden ties have been coated with various preservatives. The freshly-milled surfaces, commonly provided by an adzing operation, may expose untreated portions of the wood to the elements. Thus, to maintain the ties through their intended service lives, it is necessary to chemically treat the wooden surfaces exposed by the milling operation before the rail is remounted. However, because of various EPA and/or OSHA regulations, it is no longer permissible to simply spray the exposed surfaces with chemicals. Rather, chemically-impregnated pads are first placed on the exposed tie surfaces before the rail is re-applied. In time, the chemicals in these pads will leach into the wood.
The present invention is concerned with the automatic application and attachment of such pads to such freshly-milled tie surfaces. Manual application is impractical, and the work is repetitious and highly monotonous.